Adam Chmielewski

In this chapter, some insights from the contemporary theory of vision are employed to delineate a conception of political aesthetics. By tracing the evolution in the theory of vision from Wittgenstein’s seeing-as, through Ernst Gombrich’s seeing-into, Richard Wollheim’s seeing-in, to Emmanuel Alloa’s seeing-with, the author contends that while the sense of sight is a natural human endowment, the ability to see, just as other abilities, needs to be learned through a collective process called seeing-with-others. Wittgenstein’s repudiation of his own early view of perception is employed in the chapter to undermine the belief that seeing is a disinterested, impartial, and unbiased cognitive activity. Through reference to Wittgenstein’s idea of the captivating effect of a picture, the author claims that mastering the art of seeing requires mastering the rules of sensory orders, or perceptual regimes, which are sustained by a collective perceptual hysteresis, and which enable one to see the reality in a specifically ordered way. Human individual perceptive faculties are thus inescapably exposed to various influences that contribute to their contents and, more importantly, play a crucial role in the emergence and development of perceptive abilities in the first place. Since all cognitive subjects unavoidably participate to a varying degree in the enactive constitution of perceptual regimes, such interactive processes may be interpreted as democratic, though not in the consensual but in an agonistic sense.

Conceptions of deliberative democracy attach a particularly important role to the cognitive or epistemological competence of the agents of the political process. Such competence is viewed as a primary or even exclusive prerequisite qualifying one for the exercise of political power. The belief is amply illustrated by the contemporary debate between, on the one hand, the advocates of the broad participation of the people in democratic governance, and, on the other, the proponents of the deliberative ideal which presupposes that political power should be entrusted only to the people endowed with appropriate cognitive abilities. In my analysis of such cognitocratic conceptions, I stress the perils of the ascription of a prominent role to cognitive competence in the political process. In opposition to the cognitocratic approaches, both in their universalist and egalitarian, as well as elitist or meritocratic versions, I claim that they are marred by what I call the cognitocratic fallacy, and I argue that a more adequate understanding of governance in democratic systems should instead be based upon a political rather than epistemological capital. I also claim that the concept of political ability should be seen as potentially universal and that the potential may be activated through actual participation in democratic politics.

Among contentious issues in Axel Honneth’s social theory is the status of primary recognition. Intended as a foundation for more substantial forms of recognition of love, respect, and esteem, primary recognition was criticised as capable of accounting for inclusionary attitudes only, and for its inability to account for human negativity. This paper is a critical analysis of the principal claim of Honneth’s epistemology of recognition which asserts an intrinsic relationship between perception and primary recognition. I argue that Honneth’s conception of primary recognition, based on mutually inconsistent claims concerning the relationships between perception and recognition, leads to a serious paradox. I claim that while primary recognition is conceptually and methodologically necessary to explain recognitive attitudes which are at the centre of his theory, it is also a precondition of exclusionary attitudes. I contend that the paradox in Honneth’s theory may be avoided with the help of the concept of the regime of perception. The idea of the perceptual regime is outlined through reference to the philosophical critique of perception and its functioning is illustrated by the example of antisemitism as a radically exclusivist ideology and practice.

There are two competing pictures of science. One considers science as a system of inferences, whereas another looks at science as a system of actions. The essays included in this collection offer a view which intends to combine both pictures. This compromise is well illustrated by Szaniawski's analysis of statistical inferences. It is shown that traditional approaches to the foundations of statistics do not need to be regarded as conflicting with each other. Thus, statistical rules can be treated as rules of behaviour as well as rules of inference. Szaniawski's uniform approach relies on the concept of rationality, analyzed from the point of view of decision theory. Applications of formal tools to the problem of justice and division of goods shows that the concept of rationality has a wider significance. Audience: The book will be of interest to philosophers of science, logicians, ethicists and mathematicians.

The aim of this paper is to submit the doctrine of methodological individualism to a reconsideration from the point of view of the arguments formulated by contemporary communitarian philosophy. I propose to approach the opposition between the individual and the community, constitutive for the liberal– communitarian debate, by means of two concepts, i.e. those of recognition and order. I argue that for the individualists a social order emerges through a process of mutual recognition of the pre-existing individuals and their interests, while the communitarians claim that the task of individuals is to recognize values and norms of a pre-existing social order which is to become their own. The difference between them thus resides primarily in the ontological distinction between the respective objects of these two divergent concepts of recognition. The argument is developed through an analysis of David Hume’s concept of the individual. In opposition to some communitarian claims, I maintain that his approach may be interpreted as an antecedent of the communitarian views on the subject. I also outline a view of moral rules as neither universal, absolutist, nor purely emotivist in character, but as social constructions endowed with the status of “contingent permanence.”